by HDA Roberts
When Gwendolyn brought that ice-spear down, the impact was tremendous. Added to what had already been done, it was more than enough to smash the shield into fragments. The explosion was large enough to bring down the building Myrddin was fighting next to (not that it wasn't already in a bad way), filling the square with steam, dust and shards of ice.
Cassandra was moving before the sound of the explosion had even passed, launching herself like an arrow, right at the centre of the enemy formation, where Myrddin was staggering, deafened by the thunder, blinded by the lightning and suddenly vulnerable to pure physical force... which my wonderful Cassandra was more than willing to supply.
In spades. And with extreme prejudice.
I think she might just have hit about every nerve cluster that man had.
He managed to get out one short scream before he collapsed, completely insensible. Cassandra (ever ready) slapped three pairs of Spelleater Manacles on him and pinched all his Damascus Stones, just to be on the safe side (and because they were valuable loot she didn’t want anyone else pinching first).
I felt Myrddin’s Psychic link start to disintegrate and frantically threw out a Wide-Area Sleeping Hex onto his crowd of enslaved and servile Magicians. Having been under Myrddin’s direct control, their mental faculties were a bit scrambled, which left their Telepathic defences in a terribly state. That couldn’t last though, so I acted fast. Very few of them were able shake off my Spell and stay on their feet, and those that did soon found themselves body-slammed by either a giant, armoured behemoth or one of my Wardens. Either way, Myrddin and his cronies were no longer a threat.
I suppose we could have tried talking to them, but while many were enslaved, we knew that some weren’t, and until this was all over I didn’t want any additional complications.
I took a breath and cleared some of the blood from my eyes, shaking my head against the fogginess that seemed to be trying to encroach on my thinking.
I turned and smiled at the Princesses, who were slowly lowering themselves to the ground while Cassandra started dragging Myrddin over to us by one of his feet, the man's head banging off every flagstone on the way.
I was about to say something when an explosion drew my attention back to the others. I was relieved to see that the tide seemed to have turned.
Killian had won his fights and was now moving to help Hopkins and Lucille, who were fighting the last remaining Prime together; all the others, and the little ones, too, had been rendered down into steaming heaps of mangled flesh and bone.
Things on those fronts seemed to be going very well.
The Squidling, however... that was still a problem.
It was regenerating faster than Kron could beat it down, and its movements were getting quicker as it fully acclimatised to a significantly smaller body. It wasn’t quite up to acrobatics, but it was getting quicker and better at getting relatively unimportant tentacles into the way of Kron’s attacks, preventing her from landing solid blows on anything important.
It was getting stronger, too. Some of its appendages were even growing new methods of attack. I saw a tentacle extend an additional three metres before extruding a mouth-like orifice that vomited more of that green energy at Kron, further depleting her defences and distracting her from getting solid hits in.
"Want us to Lightning it?" Evelina said from beside me.
I turned to see Gwendolyn with her and hugged them both.
"You saved my life," I said.
"Stupid Shadow, what else were we going to do?" Evelina asked with a broad smile on her face.
I smiled back and turned towards Kron's fight.
“So... lightning?” Evelina prodded.
"She's too close," I replied.
"So what do we do?" Cassandra asked. "She's losing."
"I think I have one trick left," I said. "You'll need to cover me. I can't... I think I can only do this one thing without... damaging myself."
I said damaging, but I meant killing. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.
Cassandra nodded and started moving Magicians into a defensive circle around me.
The princesses stood next to me, protectively. I closed my eyes and recycled all those defences I'd put up to fight Myrddin. I winced as my Well took in the energy, flares of Magic making my head ache, which had never happened before. Something was badly wrong inside of me, but I didn't have the time to deal with it just then.
I called my Shadows, focussing on that one thing, letting the energy come steadily, which kept the pain relatively low as I shaped my Spell, and finally cast it.
My Shadow Colossus appeared behind Kron, drawing the gaze of the monster.
It had to look up.
This one was far larger than the last. It towered over the Abomination, twelve stories tall, bulkier than the last one, too. It stepped over Kron and brought its great fists down on the skull, fracturing the bone again and dropping it to the ground with a thump.
"Don't you dare! This one's mine!" Kron bellowed, jumping up and down in fury, which might have looked comical, but for the huge war-hammer... which made it look hilarious.
I ignored her and had my construct grab the creature, which thrashed and coiled around its new enemy, like a snake around a rabbit. I triggered a new addition to the Spell, and five metre spikes of Shadow erupted from the armour, spearing into the monster while the great arms wrapped around the squirming body, forcing the broken skull down, down, to where Kron was waiting.
"Oh," she said, "Well, I suppose that's... never mind."
She closed her own eyes, and I felt energy gather.
A lot of energy. The air turned to ice, the ground heaved and cracked as she drew in heat, gravity, static electricity and kinetic energy. Her hammer glowed, brighter and brighter and brighter still. She brought it up as my construct forced the massive skull into the ground, tearing up the road with the snapping of that immense jawbone.
Kron struck, catching the edge of the nose bone and tearing off a quarter of the skull.
She hit it again. And then again and again, all that power travelling deep into the monster before it was expended, charring it from the inside out with fire and lightning.
It took a while to kill it, but my holding it in place made all the difference as she pounded on it without reservation until she'd finished smashing the skull entirely... at which point she marched into the creature's colossal throat and continued her ugly work.
The smell was... indescribable. Rot and blood and waste... times a thousand, wafted from the depths of that nasty thing as Kron dismantled it. All the while, I poured energy into my construct, trying not to scream from the pain as the power load increased with the Entity’s thrashing.
Finally, finally, the Abomination had had enough, and it started collapsing into dust, first little by little and then in great chunks as the last of its energy was used up, leaving a triumphant (and very smelly) Kron standing in the middle of a wrecked plaza, hands and hammer raised in victory.
That seemed as good a time as any to pass out...
Chapter 54
It wasn't that I was unused to nightmares. I'd suffered from quite a few after my mistake in Gardenia, and not an insignificant number after killing Vallan, but what I experienced during my short coma after the battle... that was different.
I was trapped in a confined space. I couldn’t see or hear anything, but I could feel rough stone walls around me. I ran my hands along them and found them full of cracks. I traced them in a huge circle, but found no doors or windows. After hours like that, just following the wall, I felt something on the outside slither through a crack just as my fingers traced over it.
That moment of contact was... beautiful, and also terrible. It was familiar, warm and soothing, but also hungry and almost desperate to get in.
The Black. My bane, my craving.
I ran from it, but all I did was smack into another wall, where yet more of that dreadful power was waiting for me, pushing ever harder against the cra
cks, crumbling the mortar as it tried to get to me.
Again, I ran, but again there was nowhere to go. I tripped and fell, and the floor was just as badly cracked as the walls. I found the warmth was waiting for me there, too. There were only tiny traces of it, really, but there was enough that I could almost feel it thinking.
A concept, really; not even a word.
Soon.
I woke with a start and a gasp. My body ached from head to toe, though it was a little better than it had been when I'd fallen over. The dog sat up, alerted by my gasp, and started barking, fit to wake the dead. This in turn startled the Pixies that had been snoozing in his fur.
I recognised my room at Blackhold, the curtains pulled, and the lights low. My head immediately started pounding as I sat myself up. Burglar hopped up on the bed and gave me a very gentle snuffling, somehow understanding, in the way that only a dog can, that I wasn't well enough to be sat on just yet.
The Pixies had no such compunctions, and landed on me like creatures ten times their sizes, driving me onto my back with a thump as they hugged me with their tiny arms and all spoke at once.
"Don't do that!"
"You scared us!"
"You really scared us!"
"Jewel's right, you really scared us!"
"Who takes a nap in the middle of a battle? It's dangerous!"
I laughed, which hurt my head, but was absolutely worth it.
"They said you broke a whole building, why would you do that? Were you not paying attention?"
"He does that sometimes, humans are flighty, you know that. We can't blame him for being a bit silly."
"As long as he doesn't knock over any trees."
"You didn't knock over any trees, did you?" Meadow said, turning those big guilt-inducing eyes on me.
"Of course not," I replied.
"See? He's silly, not stupid."
I chuckled and decided not to try and get up again. In fact, I was quite content not to move at all, at least for a while. It hadn’t been pleasant just sitting up. Instead, I listened as the three Pixies bickered good-naturedly, happy now that they knew I was awake and still capable of speech.
“Oh! Don’t use Magic. The big, tall, scary, Death-smelling man told us to tell you that, if you woke up,” Melody said, flitting over to float in front of my eyes.
“If?!” I spluttered.
“That’s what he said. Are you still not awake?”
“Did he give you a reason?”
“He said he’d explain,” she said with a shrug.
I frowned and was about summon someone who could call said Death-smelling man, but, naturally, the barking of the dog had not gone unnoticed. I was soon inundated by visitors, beginning with Cassandra, who seemed to be walking under a huge weight until she saw me awake.
"Thank the Goddess," she whispered, coming over to hug me. "They were worried... they weren't sure that you could wake up."
"What? Why?" I asked once she'd let me go, though she kept a firm grip on my hand.
"I didn't understand it, and it would be best if I didn't try to explain what little I was able to get a grip on. They did tell me to tell you that even if you feel you can use Magic, that you shouldn't, and that Killian would explain why, okay?"
I nodded, willing to take her word for it. "The girls told me. How long was I out?"
"About thirty hours or so."
"Not as bad as the last coma."
"Shut up, you could have died!"
I smiled and slowly sat up, leaning against the headboard, trying not to grimace. I didn't want to worry her.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"It's fine," I lied.
She rolled her eyes and plumped up a pillow for me before texting someone. There was a buzz.
"Killian will be here in a second," she said.
"Why not Lucille, by the way? Killian isn’t really the one you call in for healing."
“Yes,” she said, looking away.
"That doesn't reassure me."
"It's fine," she said unconvincingly.
"What happened after I..."
"Fainted?"
"You promised you wouldn't call it that anymore!"
"Sorry, sorry... after you swooned."
I glared, but she just smiled back at me.
"After you went down, and Demise had a small panic attack thinking you'd keeled over for good this time-"
"While you stood looking on, the very vision of martial solidity, no doubt?"
"Exactly," she said, looking away and blushing a little.
I hid the smirk; I'd get the real story from Demise later, but Cassandra had also panicked, and more than a little. I was informed that it was fun to watch, dire circumstances aside.
"After that, your Circle rounded up the various idiots so they could begin sorting them into willing supporters and Enchanted patsies. Kron's still at that, as far as I know, and is not in a very good mood; made worse because her monster didn't leave behind anything she could mount on a wall."
That made me chuckle.
"I didn't see much more, because we were bringing you home, but they got the SCA involved to find places to hold everyone until they could be questioned. They'll be sorting this mess out for weeks."
"Never was there a better time to be laid up, I hate that sort of paperwork."
Cassandra rolled her eyes and stroked my hair, a pained look in her eyes.
"Myrddin?" I asked.
"Killian's got him somewhere. I didn't ask for specifics."
"Sounds good to me. I should probably get around to curing his infection, though."
"Why?"
I didn't have a good answer to that, so I just shrugged.
"Everyone's alright, though?" I asked after a comfortable silence.
She nodded, “Princesses went home. There was an official messenger summoning them to a big gloating-party at Adriata’s. They were very happy to hear about Myrddin’s fall. I believe there’s some talk of extradition.”
I smirked, “If anyone can give Myrddin what he deserves, it’s probably Adriata. I doubt she’d ever let him die.”
Cassandra winced. “Well... I suppose it’s not the worst idea. A bit dark, though.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow.”
Cassandra shook her head.
Tethys came in before Cassandra could reply and all but flung herself on top of me. She refused to let me go, all the while whispering some truly depraved things into my ear on account of what Cassandra had told her I'd driven Myrddin to.
That left me feeling quite a bit better, let me tell you.
Demise and Des interrupted before anything really interesting could happen. I was still feeling half-dead, but an amorous Succubus would have been enough to get me somewhere close to up and running.
My brother looked like a wreck. He hadn't been able to sleep since they brought me in. By the time I was done reassuring him that I was fine, and that these sorts of things happened to me fairly regularly (which didn't help as much as I'd hoped that it would), Killian had shown up, looking even more dour than usual.
"Easy with that glare, you could poke someone's eye out," I said with a smile, which got one from him in reply (and was not really a joke, Killian was one of those rare fellows who actually could kill with a look).
He sat on the edge of my bed and turned to the others, "Give us a moment?" he said.
They nodded and took Des out, leaving me alone... with Death.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes, "You... you aren't in a good way, Matty," he said, all humour gone from his face.
"How bad?" I asked, more than a little worried myself, now.
He sighed again, "What do you know about the Soul? How it works in relation to the Well?"
"Not much."
"Alright. The basics. The Soul is like a huge generator, giving animating sentience to a brain. It also acts as a reservoir for Magical energy, within a discreet section that we call the Well."
I nodded, that muc
h I understood.
"In a Magician, that Well is filled up by excess energy produced by the Soul, which is then shaped by the mind into a physical or mental effect. With me so far?"
I gave him a look, which got me another brief smile.
"We call it a Well, but it's really more like a huge water tank, with a thousand little taps coming out of it, through which you can draw your Magic."
He looked away for a moment before continuing, "An Archon is a bit different to other Magicians in that we can use our whole Well at once without any problems or restrictions. Our taps get bigger as we get stronger, so to speak, so we can always use the full amount whereas most other Mages can only draw so much out at a time.
"When you took those powers from Myrddin, your Well expanded... but your taps didn't," he said.
Realisation dawned at last.
"I used too much power at once," I said, remembering the... breaking feeling I'd experienced when trying to contain the explosion of the Portals.
He nodded, "And in so doing, you fundamentally damaged the structure of your Well. And your Soul."
"How badly?"
"Well, just to torture the metaphor a bit more. It's like you fractured the mountings of the taps as well as wrecking some of the taps themselves. If you draw Magic, that damage will get worse. The more you pull, the more quickly the damage will expand. Souls heal, and the damage is largely contained for now, but... it can’t be entirely contained."
"You're saying the damage is permanent?"
He nodded, "And... ongoing. Also, after that battle, and the additional strain you put on the damaged sections... if you use your Magic, the damage will become much worse, very quickly until..."
"Until...?"
"Until your Well shatters completely and you're vaporised by your Soul mixing with a vast amount of living Magic, which overloads your Aura and cooks you from the inside out."
"That's why I feel so terrible? My Aura's being overloaded?"
This was starting to get a little complex.
"More or less, yes. I'm simplifying a lot of things here. Essentially, Archon souls are massively overpowered, yours is even more so, but your body is still just a human body, it can't take the energy being leaked into it."
